Archive for the ‘Brighton Bits and Pieces’ Category

Cyberschizoid & Scare Sarah are the guest hosts of The Basement Cinema cult movie night at The Globe public house in Brighton! We asked you to vote on which cult movie you would like the Frighten Brighton Cinematheque to screen…and now the votes are in! The winner was Jake West’s British vampire epic RAZOR BLADE SMILE (1998) starring the stunning and sexy cult movie star Eileen Daly! So come and join us in the basement of The Globe for a fun free night of fear and fangs!

For all you fans of classic horror out there, this Saturday the 25thFebruary marks the second Frighten Brighton event at the Rock Inn Kemptown.

Last years Frighten Brighton was a great success and this one promises to be another fun-filled horror fuelled event – with more films, quizzes, giveaways, book signings and even a ghost story in the haunted basement. And Brighton’s very own Macabre Market will be onsite, featuring loads of stalls selling a variety of horror-themed loveliness.

The event starts at Mid-day Saturday 25th February. Tickets are £6 for the double bill starting at 5pm – everything else, including the 2pm screening of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell – is free!

The good news is that Sarah has contacted me to say more of these tours are planned for the upcoming year, with a Cemetery walk on July 1st 2012 and the Victorian Death & Mourning tour taking place as part of the Brighton Festival on Bank Holiday Monday 7th May and Saturday 19th May 2012.

I can’t recommend these enough; the cemetery is a beautiful Brighton landmark worth exploring in its own right and Sarah’s talks bring the history of this place to life in such a fun and evocative way.

For more information please visit her website, Sarah’s Events, which is updated regularly and full of other exciting events, including an intriguingly sounding ‘Hidden House’ tour going behind the scenes at Preston Manor.

The not so good news is that she has also informed me that The Centre for Community Engagement at Sussex University is being closed down with the loss of 231 associate lecturers plus all other staff.

This centre offers part-time and flexible learning for people from all walks of life and it would be such a sad loss to the community if it was to go. Please sign the petition to keep it open! The petition can be signed HERE (and is also accessible through Sarah’s web page).

Cyberschizoid and Scare Sarah, the team behind the successful Classic Horror Campaign film screenings across the UK present the first in a series of Brighton based horror events.

Frighten Brighton is taking place at The Rock Inn, Brighton on Saturday 3rd December from midday. The event will consist of a horror movie triple bill alongside a Macabre Market, a book signing from local horror writer N.J.Hallard (Breaking News : An Autozombiography) , a horror quiz, fancy dress competition and free giveaways courtesy of Rue Morgue, the world’s leading horror culture magazine.

The horror screenings begin at 2pm and feature Frankenstein & the Monster From Hell (1974), The Entity (1981) and Night of the Living Dead (1990) all for only £6 admission per person. Entrance to the Rock Inn pub and Macabre Market are free.

Fancy a rummage through some gifts with a vintage twist this Christmas? The Yard Vintage and Makers Market is open every 2nd & 4th Sunday in November and every Sunday in December in the run up to Christmas.

Diplocks Yard (73 North Road, Brighton) is just a few minutes walk from Brighton Station and is free!

Open from 11am – 5pm, The Yard is an all-weather, semi-covered venue with its own Cafe. Expect to find loads of vintage goodies from clothes, jewellery, china & homewares. There are loads of stalls selling unique and unusual gifts with a vintage twist, including our very own vintage book stall House of Secrets.

For up to the minute information check outThe Yard’s facebook page HERE. Hope to see you soon!

The Bring Classic Horror Back to Television Alliance is a Brighton-based campaign, fronted by UK Scream Queen Emily Booth and currently supported by various celebrities including Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman (Ghost Stories), Reese Shearsmith (League of Gentlemen), actress Eileen Daly, best-selling author David Moody and Hammer Horror stalwarts Shane Briant and Caroline Munro.

They aim to keep building awareness of this campaign through various magazines, film festivals and a series of events and classic horror film screenings starting in Brighton.

“In a world where television has become so bland it is now impossible to find any of the classic old horror films being screened anywhere, even on the BBC. Back in the 70’s and 80’s BBC2 ran a popular season of Saturday night Horror Double Bills every summer, which was a showcase for all the best in classic horror as well as some more obscure cult movies. Kids and parents alike looked forward to these iconic screenings every weekend and many of today’s top horror writers, actors and producers have claimed to have been inspired by these Horror Double Bills.Our aim is to bring back these classic horror double bills to the BBC so that these iconic movie moments can be shared and appreciated by a whole new generation.”

Last weekend the World Horror Convention 2010 came to Brighton – the first time the WHC has ever been held outside of the USA. For four days we found ourselves wandering the twisty turny passages embowelled deep within the Albion Hotel enjoying all things horror and literary.

We turned up Thursday afternoon to register and collect our big bag of freebies – including a fantastic souvenir anthology featuring contributions from attending guests of honour and illustrated by some of the genre’s major artists. I was also most pleased with my complimentary Mammoth Book of Zombie Comics.

There was a lot to keep us busy throughout the weekend – with a programme packed full of panel discussions, readings, art shows, interviews, parties, launches, workshops and more besides. Highlights included Ramsey Campbell’s late night ghost stories and the fabulous James Herbert being interviewed by surprise guest Neil Gaiman.

This was a great opportunity to listen and learn from all the great masters of the macabre in attendance, as well as a chance to check out some of the newer writers in horror. As usual though, I bought too many books and wish there had been more time!

With loads of stalls bursting with new and used bargains galore, the weekly Brighton Station car boot was one of our favourite places to shop on a Sunday morning. Last April we said our fond farewells as it was decamped from its location of twenty plus years and moved across town to the multi storey car park in the Marina.

Though we swore blind we wouldn’t ever go near Brighton Marina again, we couldn’t stay away for long, so last weekend we took advantage of a rare day of sunshine to trek across town to check out our beloved boot fair in its new home.

The Marina boot fair is open from 7am (5am for traders) till 1pm and it’s probably best to get there early for a chance at the real bargains. It’s a long way for us to walk so we get up extra early (for us anyway) and set out from the West Pier at the crack of 10am. Ten minutes into our trek we’re half way down the promenade and the early morning exercise is taking its toll, so we stop for some well deserved sustenance at Jack and Linda’s Traditional Fish Smokers. Jack and Linda have been smoking locally caught fish fresh on the beach here for over 14 years and there is always a delicious range of seafood snacks on offer.

Fortified by scrumptious fish soup and hot buttery kipper rolls, we continue our way along the seafront, past the crazy golf toward the Marina. Unfortunately it’s out of season so we can’t even cadge a lift off the Volks Electric railway. Undeterred we carry on down Madera Drive.

Half hour later and we’re still walking – past the nudist beach and on to Black Rock station. As we get to Black Rock we’re thankful the railway’s closed – the place is covered in poo! Yuk.

It’s now about 11.30am and we are nearly there. There’s just the traveller’s encampment to circumnavigate, where we are momentarily diverted from our mission while I play with a rather cute looking pony called Clyde, before the concrete loveliness that is Brighton Marina looms into view before us.

Through the car park and up however many flights of stairs later, we have at last arrived at the boot sale, ready to start our browsing. It’s good to see some of my old favourites – the flower stall, the buttons ‘n’ bows ‘n’ religious souvenirs from Lourdes stall, the stall run by the nice shouty lady that’s full of bargains from £1. But on the whole traders seemed a bit thin on the ground today, though being the post Christmas / New Years weekend I guess you’d expect it to be a bit quieter than normal.

There’s still enough to keep us busy for an hour or so and, though there aren’t that many book traders in attendance, I manage to find some nice vintage paperbacks to keep me going.

mermaid market - not quite as naff as the poster and plastic snowman might suggest...

One good thing about the Marina for a Sunday morning browse is you do get two markets for one. Walk out the car park, past the gigantic ASDA and you will come upon the Mermaid Market located in the square and open Sundays 11am- 4pm. This comprises of about 50 stalls selling mainly new stuff like home made soaps, food, trinkets and exotic woody things from Thailand. There is also a good second hand book stall so it’s always worth a look.

We head home via Dukes Mound, pausing briefly to pay homage outside Sussex Square – according to D it was here Black Sabbath wrote Paranoid – before wandering down into Kemptown to finish our shopping experience in the eclectic pink wonderland that is The Brighton Flea Market –but more of that in a later post.

Incidently, if you’re the sort of person who likes to check out other peoples bargains almost as much as rummaging for your own, then pay a visit to the amazing The Usual Shop. This Brighton blogger really knows her way around all the local flea markets, car boot fairs and jumble sales, faithfully recording her finds online for the rest of us to drool over.

So was Brighton Marina boot fair worth the walk? The blurb boasts of over 200 pitches but I say there were less than forty on our visit. To be fair it’s a quiet time of year but I have been here once before in October and found it similarly bereft of traders. Other people on the web seem to love this place so I’m holding off judgement to give it one more go in the spring / summer – third times a charm they say and maybe I’ll have more luck once the weather improves.

In any event, half the fun is watching other people and though it was quiet today there still seemed a fair few satisfied customers milling about…